Dr. Rakesh Mohan Bhatt

Rakesh M. Bhatt received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Illinois. He is now Professor of Linguistics and SLATE (Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education) at the University of Illinois. He is a former director of the Program in SLATE and associate director of the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Illinois. He specializes in sociolinguistics of language contact, in particular, issues of migration, minorities and multilingualism, code-switching, language ideology, and world Englishes. The empirical focus of his work has been on South Asian languages; particularly, Kashmiri, Hindi, and Indian English. His study, Verb Movement and the Syntax of Kashmiri (1999, Kluwer Academic Press), was published in the prestigious series, Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. He has also co-authored another book, World Englishes (2008, Cambridge University Press). He is the author of essays in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, Annual Review of Anthropology, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Lingua, World Englishes, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Research, English Language and Linguistics and other venues. Heis working on a book-length manuscript, under contract with CambridgeUniversity Press, on the sociolinguistic patterns of subordination ofKashmiri language in Diaspora.